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4.4.1 The semi-structured interview

The main data-collecting instrument used in the study was the semi-structured interview, eloquently defined by McCracken (1988) as “one of the most powerful methods in the qualitative armoury” (p. 9). Semi-structured interviews entail the use of

an interview guide as a general lead during the interview process, but allow the researcher and participants the freedom to expand on and /or deviate from the guide to follow interesting issues that might arise during the interview, therefore encouraging a relatively free flow of information to emerge from the interaction. Because of this feature, according to Kvale (1996), the semi-structured interview is “particularly suited for studying peoples’ understanding of the meanings in their lived world, describing their experiences and self-understanding, and clarifying and elaborating their own perspective on their lived world” (p. 105).

In composing each individual interview guide, I began by following a general interview template I had produced for each of the waves of the investigation. I felt this was necessary in order to ensure that the same terrain was covered with each of the participants (McCracken, 1988, p. 24) and so avoid puzzling “on whether what was missing from an interview was unimportant to the interviewee, or important but just didn’t come up in the interview” (Gomm, 2003, p. 124). The templates, however, were only a starting point, and from the second round of interviews I began basing the preparation of each guide on my analysis of previous data from the same participant. Ultimately this process produced highly personalised interview guides while still ensuring that all respondents had been given the opportunity to comment on the same basic areas.

Flexibility was also applied during the interview itself. Throughout the process I strove to be “responsive to nuances and opportunity” (Richards, 2003, p. 69) and to use additional, improvised prompts and questions to keep the flow of talk going or to ask unobtrusively for clarifications or expansions. Specific questions were often changed or abandoned according to the particular circumstances at hand. For some of the respondents, an opening invitation to talk would be enough to evoke ample discussion and my only task would be that of offering some direction to the flow of talk once in a while; others preferred a more structured approach. In the latter cases, the interview guide represented a valuable tool to stimulate and support the participant’s contribution.

It is often stated that in qualitative inquiry, the researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and analysis (Creswell, 1994; Kvale, 1996; Merriam, 1998) taking the place that inventories, questionnaires, or machines play in quantitative studies. This however does not mean that the role of the researcher must necessarily be an objective and detached one. In establishing my role as a researcher in this study, I drew on several lines of reflective enquiry in the literature. Fontana and Frey (2005) for example argue

that the goal of scientific neutrality in an interview session is “largely mythical” (p. 696) because interviewing is not just a neutral exchange involving collecting information, but a social interaction through which interpretations are expressed and meaning created, and where the researcher assumes the crucial role of co-constructor of such meaning. As Cohen et al. (2007) explain:

Researchers are in the world and of the world. They bring their own biographies to the research situation and participants behave in particular way in their presence. Reflexivity suggests that researchers should acknowledge and disclose their own selves in the research. (p. 171)

To disclose one’s self is not only natural for the researcher involved in an interview, but also in many ways desirable, because assuming the role of the distant and objective scientist might not be conducive to the process of self-disclosure that is sought from the respondent. Ultimately it is often suggested that “the investigator must be careful to establish a relationship of substance and some kind of connection with the respondent” (McCracken, 1988, p. 26). My own experience in this regard showed that just as in any other social exchange, participants are more likely to be willing to disclose their thoughts and feelings when they know these are received with some degree of empathy. On the other hand, the dangers of excessive intimacy and “over-rapport” (Miller, 1952) can also be counterproductive, and so one of the main responsibilities of the interviewer is to carefully manage one’s presentation of self to reach a degree of optimal distance between oneself and the interviewee. According to McCracken (1988) this is best done by manipulating the degree of formality of the exchange, which can be achieved by stressing the professional nature of the interviewer, and by attempting to cast oneself as “someone who asks very personal questions out of not personal but professional curiosity” (p. 26).

Of course this was not always easy. The longitudinal and recursive nature of the study meant that over time the relationships with the participants tends to develop and evolve just like any other social relationship and that the burden of keeping a professional degree of distance rests entirely with the researcher. Female participants of a similar age to mine, especially, tended to treat our meetings more as amiable chats than parts of a rigorous scientific investigation, and often displayed friendly behaviours that I felt I had to reciprocate to a degree, lest I should alienate them by appearing discourteous. Ultimately, I found myself agreeing with Kvale (1996) when he writes that “interviewing is a craft: it does not follow content and context-free rules of method, but

rests on the judgements of a qualified researcher…. The outcome of an interview depends on the knowledge, sensitivity and empathy of the interviewer (p. 105).

4.4.2 Additional data-collecting methods

In designing each case study, several sources of information were used as a strategy to increase accuracy and plausibility, as multiple sources of data allow researchers to “corroborate and augment evidence from other sources” (Yin, 2002, p. 87). In considering the study’s focus on social and contextual influences on identity processes and motivation, complementing the interviews with observations of the participants in the language classroom seemed like a logical choice, particularly in view of the fact that “as an outsider, an observer will notice things that have become routine to the participants themselves, things that might lead to understanding the context” (Merriam, 1998, p. 85).

In planning observations I decided not to follow a predetermined observational schedule. Instead I followed the principles used for achieving a thick description as described by Geertz (1973), which can be used in trying to explicate the connection between behaviours and events in their contexts, and to identify the subjective meaning the participants attribute to elements of the context (Ruane, 2004, p. 168). In the later stages of the study, having learned something of the participants’ perspectives on elements of their learning settings, I found myself approaching the observation by wanting to cross-check elements of the participants’ accounts and this made for a slightly more structured approach.

In the impossibility to be a complete observer (to observe from hidden or in a public setting) I assumed the role of observer-as-participant (Gold, 1958), but to minimise the possibility of the Hawthorne effect3, I attempted to limit as much as possible my involvement in the situation I was observing. This worked better in some locations than others, and, again, I had to allow for flexibility in this approach when teachers and students in small classes expressed the desire to include me in their activities or discussions. In these cases, though my presence clearly influenced the dynamics of the situation, the situation still offered itself as an opportunity to collect information on pre- determined elements of the lesson such as its structure, contents and teaching techniques, and to gather up written evidence such as handouts, textbooks and assessment sheets.

3 _{The Hawthorne effect is the phenomenon in which subjects in behavioural studies change their} performance in response to being observed.

Document collection initiated in the context of the observation sessions, was later complemented by gathering a range of other written evidence to do with the learners’ own accounts (emails, journal pages, exercise books, feedback notes on assessment, etc.) and with their learning environments (websites, newsletters, online teaching material, course outlines, advertising material, etc.). Parts of the evidence gathered this way were at times presented to the participants as discussion-starters during the interviews, and so helped me cross-check my interpretations of the influence of elements of the learning environment on their motivation, as well adding an interesting level of detail to the description of elements of the sociocultural and learning contexts which can be found in the following chapter.